Moments ago, the Hollywood Reporter released the much anticipated Michael Wolff interview with Steve Bannon, the controversial president-elect's chief strategist. As a preface, Wolff reveals that Bannon - unlike virtually anyone else in the "credible" media - predicted exactly how things would play out:

In late summer when I went up to see Steve Bannon, recently named CEO of the Donald Trump presidential campaign, in his office at Trump Tower in New York, he outlined a preposterous-sounding scenario. Trump, he said, would do surprisingly well among women, Hispanics and African-Americans, in addition to working men, and hence take Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan — and therefore the election. On Nov. 15, when I went back to Trump Tower, Bannon, promoted by the president-elect to chief strategist for the incoming administration, and by the media as the official symbol of all things hateful and virulent about the coming Trump presidency, said, as matter-of-factly as when he first sketched it out for me, “I told you so.”

Perhaps Trump naming Bannon "chief strategist" is not a bad idea.

Below we picked a few of the most notable excerpts from the interview, starting with Wolff's description of what he saw on the day he visited Trump. He writes "the New York Times, in a widely circulated article, will describe this day at Trump Tower as a scene of “disarray” for the transition team." It appears the NYT was being a source of fake news again:

"In fact, it’s all hands on: Mike Pence, the vice president-elect and transition chief, and Reince Priebus, the new chief of staff, shuttling between full conference rooms; Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and by many accounts his closest advisor, conferring in the halls; Sen. Jeff Sessions in and out of meetings on the transition team floor; Rudy Giuliani upstairs with Trump (overheard: “Is the boss meeting-meeting with Rudy or just shooting the shit?”), and Bannon with a long line of men and women outside his corner office. If this is disarray, it’s a peculiarly focused and organized kind."

Why did Wolff pick Bannon as the subject of his interview: simple - he is the brains of the operations, the man whose job is to make the Trump regime "intellectually and historically coherent."

The focus on Bannon, if not necessarily the description, is right. He’s the man with the idea. If Trumpism is to represent something intellectually and historically coherent, it’s Bannon’s job to make it so. In this, he could not be a less reassuring or more confusing figure for liberals — fiercely intelligent and yet reflexively drawn to the inverse of every liberal assumption and shibboleth. A working class kid, he enlists in the navy after high school, gets a degree from Virginia Tech, then Georgetown, then Harvard Business School. Then it’s Goldman Sachs, then he’s a dealmaker and entrepreneur in Hollywood — where, in an unlikely and very lucky deal match-up, he gets a lucrative piece of Seinfeld royalties, ensuring his own small fortune — then into the otherworld of the right wing conspiracy and conservative media. (He partners with David Bossie, a congressional investigator of President Clinton, who later spearheaded the Citizens United lawsuit that effectively removed the cap on campaign spending, and who now, as the deputy campaign manager, is in the office next to Bannon’s.) And then to the Breitbart News Network, which with digital acumen and a mind-meld with the anger and the passion of the new alt-right (a liberal designation Bannon derides) he pushes to the inner circle of conservative media from Breitbart's base on the west side of liberal Los Angeles.

Incidentally, Bannon appears to be a fan of "darkness":

“Darkness is good,” says Bannon, who amid the suits surrounding him at Trump Tower, looks like a graduate student in his T-shirt, open button-down and tatty blue blazer — albeit a 62-year-old graduate student. “Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they—“ I believe by “they” he means liberals and the media, already promoting calls for his ouster “—get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”

Bannon next discusses the "battle line" inside America's great divide.

He absolutely — mockingly — rejects the idea that this is a racial line. “I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist,” he tells me. “The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver—” by "we" he means the Trump White House "—we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years. That’s what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It’s not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about.”

Trump's strategist views himself as a simple symbol: the "fall of the establishment." He also slams the media: "The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country....It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f—ing idea what’s going on. If The New York Times didn’t exist, CNN and MSNBC would be a test pattern." He's right.

Bannon represents, he not unreasonably believes, the fall of the establishment. The self-satisfied, in-bred and homogenous views of the establishment are both what he is against and what has provided the opening for the Trump revolution. “The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,” he continues. “It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f—ing idea what’s going on. If The New York Times didn’t exist, CNN and MSNBC would be a test pattern. The Huffington Post and everything else is predicated on The New York Times. It’s a closed circle of information from which Hillary Clinton got all her information — and her confidence. That was our opening.”

Bannon's vision: an "entirely new political movement", one which drives the conservatives crazy. As to how monetary policy will coexist with fiscal stimulus, Bannon has a simple explanation: he plans to "rebuild everything" courtesy of negative interest rates and cheap debt throughout the world. Those rates may not be negative for too long.

“Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”

How Bannon describes Trump: "an ideal vessel"

It is less than obvious how Bannon, now the official strategic brains of the Trump operation, syncs with his boss, famously not too strategic. When Bannon took over the campaign from Paul Manafort, there were many in the Trump circle who had resigned themselves to the inevitability of the candidate listening to no one. But here too was a Bannon insight: When the campaign seemed most in free fall or disarray, it was perhaps most on target. While Clinton was largely absent from the campaign trail and concentrating on courting her donors, Trump — even after the leak of the grab-them-by-the-pussy audio — was speaking to ever-growing crowds of thirty-five or forty thousand. “He gets it, he gets it intuitively,” says Bannon, perhaps still surprised he has found such an ideal vessel. “You have probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan, coupled with an economic populist message and two political parties that are so owned by the donors that they don’t speak to their audience. But he speaks in a non-political vernacular, he communicates with these people in a very visceral way. Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches, so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400 kids.”

Bannon on Murdoch: "Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump"

At that moment, as we talk, there’s a knock on the door of Bannon's office, a temporary, impersonal, middle-level executive space with a hodgepodge of chairs for constant impromptu meetings. Sen. Ted Cruz, once the Republican firebrand, now quite a small and unassuming figure, has been waiting patiently for a chat and Bannon excuses himself for a short while. It is clear when we return to our conversation that it is not just the liberal establishment that Bannon feels he has triumphed over, but the conservative one too — not least of all Fox News and its owners, the Murdochs. “They got it more wrong than anybody,” he says. “Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump. To him, Trump is a radical. Now they’ll go centrist and build the network around Megyn Kelly.” Bannon recounts, with no small irony, that when Breitbart attacked Kelly after her challenges to Trump in the initial Republican debate, Fox News chief Roger Ailes — whom Bannon describes as an important mentor, and who Kelly’s accusations of sexual harassment would help topple in July — called to defend her. Bannon says he warned Ailes that Kelly would be out to get him too.

Finally, Bannon on how he sees himself in the administration:

Bannon now becomes part of a two-headed White House political structure, with Reince Priebus — in and out of Bannon's office as we talk — as chief of staff, in charge of making the trains run on time, reporting to the president, and Bannon as chief strategist, in charge of vision, goals, narrative and plan of attack, reporting to the president too. Add to this the ambitions and whims of the president himself, and the novel circumstance of one who has never held elective office, the agenda of his highly influential family and the end runs of a party significant parts of which were opposed to him, and you have quite a complex court that Bannon will have to finesse to realize his reign of the working man and a trillion dollars in new spending.

“I am,” he says, with relish, “Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.”

Perhaps that was a Freudian slip: Cromwell's end under Henry VIII was not a happy one.

“The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver—” by "we" he means the Trump White House "—we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years. That’s what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It’s not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about.”

... I'd say, IMO, Steve Bannon is more than an excellent choice for President Trump's team ... Bannon's education, business, work and military experience speaks highly of his abilities ... I wish the MSM would stop labelling him a white nationalist and concentrate on his successful accomplishments and what he could contribute to Trump's cabinet.

........ from wiki ...

Stephen Kevin Bannon was born on November 27, 1953, in Norfolk, Virginia into a working-class, Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats. He graduated from Virginia Tech in 1976 and holds a master's degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. In 1983, Bannon received an M.B.A. degree with honors from Harvard Business School.

Bannon was an officer in the United States Navy, serving on the destroyer USS Paul F. Foster as a Surface Warfare Officer in the Pacific Fleet and stateside as a special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon.

After his military service, Bannon worked at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in the Mergers & Acquisitions Department. In 1990, Bannon and several colleagues from Goldman Sachs launched Bannon & Co., a boutique investment bank specializing in media. Through Bannon & Co., Bannon negotiated the sale of Castle Rock Entertainment to Ted Turner. As payment, Bannon & Co. accepted a financial stake in five television shows, including Seinfeld. Société Générale purchased Bannon & Co. in 1998.

In 1993, while still managing Bannon & Co., Bannon was made acting director of Earth-science research project Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. Under Bannon, the project shifted emphasis from researching space exploration and colonization towards pollution and global warming. He left the project in 1995.

After the sale of Bannon & Co., Bannon became an executive producer in the film and media industry in Hollywood, California. He was executive producer for Julie Taymor's 1999 film Titus. Bannon became a partner with entertainment industry executive Jeff Kwatinetz at The Firm, Inc., a film and television management company. In 2004, Bannon made a documentary about Ronald Reagan titled In the Face of Evil. Through the making and screening of this film, Bannon was introduced to Peter Schweizer and publisher Andrew Breitbart. He was involved in the financing and production of a number of films, including Fire from the Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman, The Undefeated (on Sarah Palin), and Occupy Unmasked. Bannon also hosts a radio show (Breitbart News Daily) on a Sirius XM satellite radio channel.

Bannon is also executive chairman and co-founder of the Government Accountability Institute, where he helped orchestrate the publication of the book Clinton Cash. In 2015, Bannon was ranked No. 19 on Mediaite's list of the "25 Most Influential in Political News Media 2015".

Bannon convinced Goldman Sachs to invest in a company known as Internet Gaming Entertainment. Following a lawsuit, the company rebranded as Affinity Media and Bannon took over as CEO. From 2007 through 2011, Bannon was chairman and CEO of Affinity Media.

Bannon became a member of the board of Breitbart News. In March 2012, after founder Andrew Breitbart's death, Bannon became executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, the parent company of Breitbart News. Under his leadership, Breitbart took a more alt-right and nationalistic approach towards its agenda. Bannon declared the website "the platform for the alt-right" in 2016. Bannon identifies as a conservative. Speaking about his role at Breitbart, Bannon said: "We think of ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly 'anti-' the permanent political class."

The New York Times described Breitbart News under Bannon's leadership as a "curiosity of the fringe right wing", with "ideologically driven journalists", that is a source of controversy "over material that has been called misogynist, xenophobic and racist." The newspaper also noted how Breitbart was now a "potent voice" for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

Bannon: “The globalists gutted the American working class…..the Democrats were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It’s not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about.”

Dear Mr. Bannon, it has to be way more than $1trillion in 10 years. Obama’s $831 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) didn’t make up the difference for all the job lost in 2007/08. Manufacturing alone lost about 9 million jobs since 1979, when it peaked.

What is missing here is the resolve to seize these libtard's funds to 1) compensate for past tortuous interference with the political process and eliminate their capability for all such misdeeds going forward, and 2) make a down payment on said infrastructure spending.

This is simply a compromise stance based on the premise that a New Yorker will reject the first preference to bring back public hangings and simultaneously claw back their ill-gotten gains.

if you all identify the new york times with liberal causes, fine. no better way to blow it up than bust 9-11 to which it was and is an accessory after the fact (ditto obama and clintons). and it will never look like partisan wrangling since the original crime was done under cheney (the darth vader bannon seems to like).

i have some additional reservations about bannon:

1) his assistant headed up the citizens united vs. fec which got the campaign laws changed so corporations and the rich could absolutely control the u.s. political process. this is not what trump ran on.

2) "Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up and see if it sticks". this is the kind of idiocy the obama administration tried and at least they picked industries (solar power, electric cars), if not firms, that might have a future in the u.s. and the world. we have enough ships and steel now; that's why we have zero interest rates (and i agree, likely not for long). improved infrastructure, government's traditional province, is what the u.s. needs and what can employ the unemployed. bannon seems clueless about that. government subsidies to dying or dead industries here are absolutely not what we need.

3) his historical reference to thomas cromwell seems, as indicated above, to be inapt: "During his rise to power, Cromwell made many enemies, including his former ally Anne Boleyn. He played a prominent role in her downfall. He later fell from power, after arranging the king's marriage to German princess Anne of Cleves. Cromwell had hoped that the marriage would breathe fresh life into the Reformation in England, but Henry found his new bride unattractive and it turned into a disaster for Cromwell, ending in an annulment six months later. Cromwell was arraigned under a bill of attainder and executed for treason and heresy on Tower Hill on 28 July 1540. The king later expressed regret at the loss of his chief minister." (wiki)

henry the eighth was a poor king; he was important because he used the excuse of anti-catholicism to be able to execute or otherwise get rid of his wives in his quest to find one who was hot and would bear him a son (much of the world then thought the mother determined the sex of the child), overlooking the fact that his daughter, later elizabeth the first who would defeat the spanish armada, was far better monarch material than was he. we certainly hope that trump is a better president (albeit with at least as trying times) than henry was a king.

whether bannon is even as successful as thomas cromwell remains to be seen (watch out for your head and, certainly, your anne of cleves, steve).

So far, Bannon and Gen. Flynn are the best Trump appointments. I'm pleased with everything...again, so far. Whatever Trump does with Treasury, we need to give him some latitude, as it's near to impossible finding anyone with the requisite qualifications who hasn't passed through the halls of GS, DB or JPM. Besides, having any of those initials on your CV doesn't necessarily signal evil, though it does (and right-well should) raise suspicions.

Anyway, back to Bannon. Can't deny that I'm very impressed with this guy, seems to have the preternatural gift for sensing and stoking the flux and flow of aggregate sentiment, unquestionably brilliant strategist AND tactician (i stress 'and' because they are distinct qualities and represent different skill-sets); won't go so far as to call him a genius (yet), but early indications tend to this conclusion. Here's to hoping victory won't curdle his ego into something caustic to the intellect.

For the time being -- in assessing both the surface and substance of things -- inserting Bannon in the zero-point of the administration's thought nexus should be solid reassurance for all Hedgers. As things progress, a clearer picture is emerging: Trump's for-real and has a very strong sense of mission.

Some people need to chill. If anyone expected Trump to post a craigslist ad for nihilistic malcontents to staff his administration, brace yourself for sustained disappointment. He's welding together a solid and serious-minded staff of patriots. Trust me when I say that Jeff Sessions is as close to one of us as any sitting Senator; back in Bama, Shelby is the 'connected' Senator, Sessions made his reputation with tenacity, integrity and intellect (though i'll admit he doesn't immediately strike the observer as exceedingly bright, word has it that he is). Romney knows how to get things done and knows the people to call. Having met many of the Bain staff, I can say from first hand experience, they are ALL top-shelf (though I'm no big fan of Bain's practices, if anyone knows how to make America attractive to industry, it's the boys at Bain. If all that talent were channeled into domestic strength, Romney could end up being one of the best appointments).

https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-e...
This Is How Steve Bannon Sees The Entire World
.
hear the man tell it, very coherent and informed.
there is one huge problem and that is the crusade
he advises against islamic fascism, the crusades 2.0.
this one idea will level his entire philosophy moot
and the exact opposite will be required to execute the crusade.
.
so, is it all just a brilliant charade?

MEFOBILLS: Local economy means that local labor can make prices, to then buy from each other.

Can Trump achieve that? I don’t think Trump could achieve that even here. Just look at the post below yours by zhandax: make a down payment on said infrastructure spending.

Even most Hedgers don’t get it that money is just a token and not wealth. If you ask the general population the problem, you’ll get an answer even worse that goes something like this: “We help the world with money.” So, under this level of ignorance, do you think this people can make an intelligent decision?

If Trump uses “debt money,” Trump and America will fail miserably.

If Trump uses “offshore” (any private) money, say to finance US roads, that will be a disaster later on because of all the tools (servitude) Americans will be paying.

Trump needs to use public money, period. If he doesn’t, America will fail later on. Don’t take my word for it, just look at Canada and Japan before they were introduced to the US style capitalism. Their economies became a total (servitude) disaster.

You never win by going for minds, you go after the power source of your enemy, and shut it off, permanently. And that would be very easy, just expose all the illegality and immorality of how, and who is doing what. Who's been paying for playing, and all at your expense, that would bring the beast down to it's knees.

you will never get all their money. most of the money stripped so far has been that of shareholders, never the perps.

you want the people? bust 9-11 and see how that

1) gets at the absolute worst of the worst of the power elite that has really taken the u.s. down the wrong road in the last twenty years, and

2) changes, radically, the minds (where lasting change resides) of the sheeple of this country and the world (seriously, bust 9-11 and trump or his designee gets reelected like roosevelt in '36 or reagan in '84).

any left over? bust the greatest control fraud (aka the "financial crisis", "too big to fail/too big to jail") in the history of the world. and bust it as criminal prosecutions of the perps not fines on the corporations. obama found this puzzlingly hard to do.

get william k. black to show you how. he did it to the savings and loan criminals under george hw bush and he's itching to have another whack at these subterranean rodents.

TRUMP could destroy the local Arizona economies. Illegal immigrants are boycotting Arizona by the thousands and moving elsewhere showing their outrage with Donald Trump's proposed law of sending illegal immigrants back to their native countries.

In the small town of Guadalupe, AZ, south of Phoenix, Manuel Renaldo is one of those who are vowing to punish Arizona by leaving.

As he loaded his stolen car with his taxpayer-furnished belongings and family of ten, Renaldo told this reporter through an interpreter: It's a matter of principle; I refuse to be supported by a state that treats me like a criminal!

The effects of the exodus are already being felt by some Arizona retailers, who are reporting dwindling thefts & sales of beer, tequila, spray paint, and ammunition.

Also hit hard are the state hospitals, which have reported a dramatic decline in births and

emergency room visits of non-revenue patients!.

State welfare agencies are preparing to lay off staffs that distribute food stamps and unemployment benefits. Tattoo parlors are in an absolute state of panic!

Renaldo told a reporter, through an interpreter, that he and his family are moving to Canada, with a new Liberal government under Justin Trudeau and new higher taxes and hardworking people who will better support him and his family with dignity!

@synergize ~ I guess there are MANY ways to look at BANNON (including cartoons)

Roger T. "Race" Bannon is a special agent, bodyguard, and pilot from Intelligence One. Governmental fears that Jonny could "fall into the wrong hands" resulted in Bannon's assignment to guard and tutor him.[12] Race was born in Wilmette, Illinois, to John and Sarah Bannon.[13] He is an expert in judo, having a third-degree black belt as well as the ability to defeat noted experts in various martial arts, including sumo wrestlers. The character was voiced by Mike Road, with his design modeled on actor Jeff Chandler.[14] The name is a combination of Race Dunhill and Stretch Bannon from an earlier Doug Wildey comic strip.[3] The surname Bannon is Irish (from 'O'Banain') meaning "white".[15][16

What the fuck are you even talking about? I am here pimping BITCOIN. Do you see me pumping Ether or ZCash or some shit? Motherfucker if you are not going to buy Bitcoin get out of teh way. Lot's of other people here are excited and motivated to buy Bitcoin.